When Jenson Brooksby was the last man standing on the clay courts of the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, perhaps nobody was more surprised than Brooksby himself.

In the first round of qualifying, the 24-year-old stared down a match point before battling back to take the match in three sets. It was almost as if he was emboldened by flipping that scenario into a win. In the main draw, he faced three more match points in the third-set tiebreak against third-seeded Alejandro Tabilo before taking it himself. One more time for good measure, top seed Tommy Paul had a match point (also in the third set tiebreak) on Brooksby in the semifinals but couldn’t convert.

After a total of seven wins, including a decisive 6-4, 6-2 victory over Frances Tiafoe in the final, Brooksby captured his first ATP Tour title. “It means the world. It was one of my biggest goals ever since I have been a professional tennis player,” Brooksby said. “It’s probably the best week of my life.”

If anyone deserved to have such a week, it’s Jenson Brooksby. Just three months ago, he stepped onto the court at the Australian Open for his first competitive tennis match in exactly two years. Life has been a lot for the young American these last few years after getting slapped with an anti-doping suspension for missing a third test in a year. Then, undergoing double wrist surgery, which took longer to recover from than expected, he felt like life was piling on.

But perhaps it was revealing his autism spectrum disorder that was the most taxing journey. As a child, therapists considered him a severe case. He said that he was non-verbal until the age of four and had periods in which he worked with therapists for 40 hours a week to help him communicate. “It’s ... just something I don’t want to have to keep to myself,” Brooksby told the AP in December.

On Sunday, he acknowledged that past as part of his present.

“I’ve had a lot of different life adversity, whether it’s on the court or off the court,” he said after winning the title. “So I think it makes these situations... like, I still get nervous about them and somewhat tense for sure, but it gives you a different perspective once you’ve had to face other difficult things in life.”

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